diff --git a/content/posts/2024/63-moving-my-dvds-to-the-media-server/index.md b/content/posts/2024/63-moving-my-dvds-to-the-media-server/index.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..a44e18f --- /dev/null +++ b/content/posts/2024/63-moving-my-dvds-to-the-media-server/index.md @@ -0,0 +1,122 @@ +--- +title: Moving my DVDs to the media server +summary: My homeserver serves my old video files via DLNA. I decided to dump all my + DVDs to the video share. +date: 2024-02-08T19:49:36+0100 +#lastmod: +categories: +- computerstuff +tags: +- dvd +- selfhost +- unraid +- dlna + +--- + +Let's go a little bit back in time, shall we? Some day in 2005ish. We don't use USB sticks or +SSDs to backup our data, we still store most of our shit on CD-ROMs or even DVD-RWs (or ROMS). +Whatever. + +What I actually want to say: let's backup some (or all) of my old DVD movies. I have a box full +of DVSs in my basement and I wanted to push them all to my homeserver -- so I could watch them +on the big TV screen because I don't have a DVD player (or similar) any more. + +But music and video industry did not make it easy for us. They added super-duper-fancy +copy-protection to their DVDs because people cloned them and gave them to other people these days. + +Anyone still remember these tools, like _CloneCD_, _ClonyXXL_, _Alcohol120%_ etc. Some also let +you emulate your cloned files so you did not have to let them in your CD-ROM drive. That was quite +handy when you played computer games, because these games required you to let the CD-ROM/DVD in +your drive at all time (which was sometimes annoying because of the spinnning disk). + +But the actual topic is the cloning of these old DVDs. I started today, and got copied about +6 DVDs without problems and then: _"Kiss kiss bang bang"_ -- damn, what is that? The DVD drive +went like crazy and the ripping software (I use [Handbrake](https://handbrake.fr/) in this case) +was like dead. + +I already installed the package _libdvdcss_ at that point, the first DVDs went just fine without it. +_libdvdcss_ lets you read copy-protected DVDs. But still, _Handbrake_ did not like it either. + +It is [dvdbackup](https://dvdbackup.sourceforge.net/)s turn now. I cloned the main movie to a local +directory and told Handbrake to open that folder then. It worked! But: + +There was no movie with 1h or 2h play time. There were 5 20 minutes movies with 2 audio streams +(english, german) -- the first small movie had the german audio track as first stream, the other +had the german track as second stream. + +So here is what I did: rip all of them separately and concatenate them later with _ffmpeg_ into one +big file. That sucked because I copied them with both audio tracks and when I put them together later, +the audio streams were swapping in the middle of the video -- so I ripped them only with one audio +stream, the german one -- which I identified before with _mpv_. + +## What can we do on the command line + +### DVD with no copy-protection + +Mount the DVD to a folder + +~~~console +$ mount mnt/dvd +~~~ + +That is easy, because I made the following entry in my `/etc/fstab` file: + +~~~fstab +/dev/cdrom /home/dominic/mnt/dvd auto ro,user,noauto,unhide 0 0 +~~~ + +Open _Handbrake_ and select the dvd folder as source. There is usually a looong chapter, select it +and configure the output format to the desired format, add or modify the audio tracks and maybe +the subtitles and you're good to go. + +### DVD with copy-protection + +Most of the time, _Handbrake_ will not respond or feel like hanging... + +Clone the main title of the DVD to another directory on a local filesystem. + +~~~console +$ dvdbackup -i /dev/sr0 -F -v -o OutputFolder +~~~ + +Select _OutputFolder_ as your source in _Handbrake_. + +You may have to rip multiple small movies, save them to some directory. Once finished, open +that directory in a terminal window and put them together. + +~~~console +$ ffmpeg -i VTS_03_1.mp4 -i VTS_03_2.mp4 -i VTS_03_3.mp4 -i VTS_03_4.mp4 \ + -filter_complex "[0:v][0:a][1:v][1:a][2:v][2:a][3:v][3:a]concat=n=4:v=1:a=1" OutputMovie.mp4 +~~~ + +I had to do this with a 5-parts movie: + +~~~console +$ ffmpeg -i fin_1.mp4 -i fin_2.mp4 -i fin_3.mp4 -i fin_4.mp4 -i fin_5.mp4 \ + -filter_complex "[0:v][0:a][1:v][1:a][2:v][2:a][3:v][3:a][4:v][4:a]concat=n=5:v=1:a=1" \ + -vsync vfr Kiss.Kiss.Bang.Bang.2006.DVDRip.de.mp4 +~~~ + +They say, you should use `-vsync vfr` when the framerate of the individual parts is way off. + +## End result + +Now, that I ripped about 40 DVDs, I'm glad that it's over... + +I had to skip about 8 other DVDs because I wasn't able to read them -- having the DVD drive +spinning up until it stops and begins again with spinning up until it stops... + +Crazy copy-protection I guess. I will rip them the old way, maybe a video capture card will help. + +What to do with bought videos on Amazon Prime or Youtube etc.? + +What might work: having [OBS studio](https://obsproject.com/) that records off a virtual screen +on which the pop-out player of Firefox runs in fullscreen mode. But: that will need some more +investigation -- I'm pretty sure those bastards will have some anti-download clauses in their +license agreements. + +For the sake of completeness: I'm using [miniDLNA](https://sourceforge.net/projects/minidlna/) +in my network. It feels like three times more responsive than my old Synology DS918+ (yes, it +runs on way better hardware). + diff --git a/content/posts/2024/63-moving-my-dvds-to-the-media-server/thumb.jpg b/content/posts/2024/63-moving-my-dvds-to-the-media-server/thumb.jpg new file mode 100644 index 0000000..9659bfd --- /dev/null +++ b/content/posts/2024/63-moving-my-dvds-to-the-media-server/thumb.jpg @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +version https://git-lfs.github.com/spec/v1 +oid sha256:36f31a01db2d1122eb6535a59c1a101c79768ecd830d11521089532d22023ae3 +size 12005